Staple goods refer to products that have a fairly stable demand throughout the year without being affected by any seasonality factors.
It can sometimes also be referred to as staple stock, staple products, staples, etc.
Different types of retailers can have their own categories of staple goods.
For example, the staple goods of a grocery store would be perishables like fresh milk and bread. But the staple products of a electronics store would be popular products like computers and mobile phones.
For this reason, the staple goods of a business is often also referred to as core product. Representing the core range of merchandise in which it generate the bulk of it’s sales from.
Features of staple products
A key feature of staple products is that consumers seldom purchase them based on their price.
This is because these products are usually essential items.
For example, a tennis store knows that tennis balls are essential for lovers of the game to purchase no matter what racquets they use.
Businesses know this. And therefore, discounts are seldom offered for such items.
In fact, patrons walking into a tennis store fully expect to find tennis balls available for purchase because to such a retailer, tennis balls are staple goods.
It wouldn’t be able to call itself as a tennis specialty shop if it don’t even carry tennis balls.
For this reason, we can also term staple goods of a store as it’s most important products.
Another feature of staple products is that they seldom suffer from demand fluctuations.
Demand for them are pretty consistent throughout the year, except of extraordinary events.
Consumers of staple goods are usually unwilling to cut their budget set aside for these items no matter what their financial situation is.
Staple food
One of the most recognized category of staple goods is staple food.
When we walk into a supermarket, we would undoubtedly find a huge variety of food products all over the place.
But there are some essential foodstuff that are obviously staple foods which we fully expect to find in a supermarket.
Some of the common staple food include:
- Rice
- Eggs
- Cooking oil
- Sugar
- etc
Consumers consume them in large quantities and they sell-through very well regardless of brand or price.
Different brands could very well sell similar items with the only difference being the difference in label and logo.
Customers fully expect to find them in supermarkets. And it’s no exaggeration that a store would have it’s reputation tarnished as a supermarket should it not carry any of these staple food products.
In recent years, there is a growing upward movement in the demand for premium staple products.
And one can observe the rising presence of premium-looking labels and packaging used for staple food products selling at a noticeable premium compared to prices of generic brands.
This is a sign that a category has strong demand for better quality and consumers are willing to pay more for that increase in quality.
It presents market gaps that manufacturers can find new opportunities in.
